The Urban Sun Belt: Setting The Agenda
This webinar explores findings from a report from the Kinder Institute on the urban Sun Belt – covering such topics as demographic change, the economy, housing, and sprawl. A panel discussion follows the presentation
Kinder Institute Lunch-Out 2021
The Kinder Institute held its 2021 annual luncheon on Tuesday, May 11 as a virtual Lunch-Out. Guests from Houston and around the world gathered online to hear Stephen Klineberg and other institute leaders share the findings from the 40th Kinder Houston Area Survey, and discuss key aspects of the institute’s transformative efforts in response to the challenges of the pandemic.
Kinder Institute Luncheon 2022
After two years of virtual events, the 2022 Kinder Institute Luncheon will once again be one of Houston’s most insightful gatherings of business and community leaders!
Houston, Dallas led metro area growth in 2021 even as their urban cores lost population
Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth were again among the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the country last year, according to new statistics released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
After 20 years, the center of Harris County's population has moved outside the Loop
In 20 years, the population center of Harris County moved 2 miles, taking it from the heart of the historic Heights area and outside the Loop for the first time. It’s yet another sign of the suburban surge underway in the Houston area.
What Seattle and Boise got right about Hispanic representation in city politics
Houston, Boise, and Seattle share a strong-mayor form of government, and its voters tend to favor progressive-leaning candidates. But these two majority-White cities have lifted Hispanic candidates into office in recent years, while representation has dwindled in Houston.
In 2011, Houston created a district to boost Hispanic council representation. What happened?
In November 1979, Houston City Council went from being almost exclusively male and white to being dramatically more diverse, literally overnight, as voters elected the council’s first two women and its first Mexican-American, and tripled the representation of African-Americans. The new council was also on average 10 years younger. It was a new day in city politics—thanks to federally required reforms that led to single-member districting—and Houston never looked back.
How Dallas-Fort Worth is poised to dominate America’s heartland
There’s an adage in Texas about a braggart being someone who’s “all hat and no cattle.” But you can’t say that about “Big D,” rapidly emerging as the de facto capital of the American Heartland.
Texas cities are as sprawling as ever. But they’re also more dense.
The popular perception is that Texas’s metropolitan areas are sprawling all over the place because the state has so much land. The truth of the matter is a little more complicated, however. Yes, all the metros in Texas are sprawling – but they’re densifying as well. And when you “net it out,” the density is winning over the sprawl in the big metros – while the sprawl is winning over the density in the smaller ones.
2020 picture of Texas comes into focus: A diverse state dominated by major metros
Texas added about 4 million new residents from 2010 to 2020, making it the third fastest-growing state. At the same time, it also became more diverse, and much like the rest of the country, its residents are increasingly concentrated in cities and suburbs.
Four predominantly Black neighborhoods in Houston have been experiencing gentrification in recent years. Data captured by U.S. Census surveys shows these communities are becoming proportionally more Hispanic and more educated, housing prices are accelerating, and residents there are more likely to rent and face cost burdens than others in Harris County.
Who owns the single-family rentals and what do we know about them?
A lot of the rent houses owned by real estate investment trusts — or REITs — are located in unincorporated parts of Harris County and municipal utility districts (MUDs) that have been hit hardest by foreclosures and flooding. Many of them are connected to local and national homebuilders.
Move-outs in 2020 may have cost Houston thousands of residents
By the end of 2020, Houston had potentially tens of thousands of fewer residents, data from the U.S. Postal Service suggests. Like other cities, it experienced a surge in migration as people began leaving urban areas amid the pandemic lockdowns. That shift is also continuing to take place well into 2021.
Trees battle Houston’s brutal heat, but many poorer areas are left unshaded
Trees provide significant benefits that can be felt both now and in the future, from lowering temperatures, fighting flooding and slowing climate change. But not all Houstonians enjoy the valuable shade and other advantages trees offer in equal measures. A new interactive mapping tool makes it easier to see which neighborhoods are most in need of more trees.
Houston and Harris County’s long reign of growth may have come to an end
Houston has always had a reputation as a fast-growing, go-go, get-it-done kind of place. But that’s changing.
Rice University
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